Month: November 2010 (Page 2 of 3)

It has been quite a while since I posted a picture. Isn’t it getting big? Not quite big enough for me to be looking for a flower stalk, but it won’t be too much longer. It has had a hard life – first drowning because there were not holes in the bottom of the pot, then drying out because with all the holes, it needed watering a lot more often. I think we have it down now. We keep it in the window in the shower!

I know it is fuzzy, but can you tell what this is? I tried several times and this is the best one I could get.

Well, I rejoined WeightWatchers online today. I’m just not having any luck losing anything, and am, in fact, getting heavier. So, I am pleased to say that I ate right today, for a change. Didn’t have any sugar, either. I know I can do it with the WW tracking method, but I just don’t do as well when I do it on paper, as opposed to on-line. I think on-line just seems like someone else knows about it, sort of like you are “reporting to someone.” It is about $20 a month, but I think it will be worth it. It should be less than $100 to get the rest of the weight off. At least I’ve learned what it will take to just maintain once I hit my goal. I’ve got to find the middle ground between really restrictive eating and eating everything in sight, especially sweets!

I tried making the banana rolls with pumpkin instead of bananas. Two things. They are very yellow/orange (but not as yellow as the picture looks!) and the pumpkin doesn’t have the intense flavor of the banana. I’ll bring some for Thanksgiving. I also make monkey bread with some of it and that was very good. The flavors didn’t compete. Still very yellow, though!

Yes, we are sheetrocking the guest bedroom today. Good thing, because it is lousy weather outside – rather slushy and cold. But upstairs it is warm and cozy. Too bad our moods aren’t very warm and cozy. This is the most un-square house we have ever worked with and, thus, nothing fits like you think it will. Grrrrr…. But we have 3 out of four of the walls, plus the slopes and the ceiling done, so we made good progress.

(So why didn’t the second picture end up beside this first one, when the curser was there?)

We actually have more done than these pictures show – these were taken a little earlier in the afternoon.

Another week done. They seem to go so fast when they are ordinary weeks – everything on schedule, nothing terribly exciting. I like exciting weeks, because they go slower. Exciting in a good way, of course.

We will be hanging the first of the sheet rock on the new bedroom tonight. Exciting! We have 4 sheets already cut and ready to hang now that we have the ok of the inspector.  Dad bought some of those things you use to carry sheet rock and it is a lot easier to get them upstairs. Not easy, but easier! It is a pretty small room, so won’t take an awful lot.

Will it snow? Looks like it this time. Can’t wait to start taking winter pictures again. Those ones of the lake were pretty incredible, though. So blue. I have one hanging to look at all winter when I start longing for the warm weather. A photo of a really green tree or blue lake will usually tide me over until spring!

Only two weeks until Thanksgiving. I’m getting antsy to put up Christmas decorations!

My food pictures didn’t turn out as well, but here is the story of our supper. The chicken and barley soup was great, but the parsnips mashed with sour cream were pretty awful. I won’t be making them again!

It is even more beautiful today than yesterday. Almost impossibly beautiful. 69 degrees on November 9. So I took the camera and got some good shots of the lake, as well as some interesting shots at work to update the picture on our Facebook page. And a cool barn down the street. Here you go!

Wow. 33 years ago today, Dad and I stepped across the threshold from being carefree college students to being parents. We thought we were so mature, but looking back, I see that we were so young. (23) But we knew enough to ask the doctor for advice and he told us something that we have remembered forever: This baby (Nathan) is a person, not just a baby. Raise him to be an adult – keep that focus in mind through everything else. And we did. With all of you. Sure, we had fun with the baby and child stages. But our goal was always to raise good, healthy, well-adjusted adults. And we feel we accomplished our goal! And then some….

Happy birthday, Nathan! You changed our lives. And in a very, very, very good way.

Another unbelievably beautiful fall day yesterday. I wanted to take a picture of the lake in Chetek because it was incredibly blue, but I didn’t have the camera. I’ll see if it is as pretty today. Soon it will be ice, so I’d like to get a nice picture first.
Other than that, I just had a nice relaxing Monday, getting paperwork done, things straightened up a bit and going to New Auburn Community Choir in the evening. It felt really late by the time we were done, because it would have been 10:00, rather than 9:00.

I was feeling bad that you kids couldn’t come home to a house that you were familiar with and that all the memories from your childhood are gone, but then I thought that it is just the houses that are gone – I still have the stuff. So I looked around for a few things that we have had for a very long time, that maybe would bring back some memories for you.